How can there be a water shortage at Crater Lake?

Park may need to import water this summer

Apr. 19, 2014

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Crater Lake National Park is among the snowiest inhabited places in North America, and popular for snowshoeing and skiing, but it?s total snowpack has been declining since the 1950s. / Zach Urness / Statesman Journal

Visitor

United States Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell is visiting Crater Lake National Park, highlighting the promotional “Go Wild!” theme that encourages people to connect with the nation’s natural, historic, and cultural heritage through events and programs at 401 national park units across the country. Jewell joins students from the Network Charter School in Eugene for an educational snowshoe hike along the Hemlock Trail. Students will conduct hands-on scientific experiments to learn about the temperature, density and water equivalency of snow, as well as study the impacts of climate change and the adaptations of plants and animals to winter at Crater Lake. National Park Week runs from April 19 to April 27.

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The irony isn’t lost on Crater Lake National Park management assistant Scott Burch.

He understands how crazy it sounds for a national park surrounding the deepest lake in the United States to be facing a water shortage for the second year in a row.

But with snowpack levels at the Southern Cascade caldera 43 percent of normal and melting fast — and a severe drought gripping Southern Oregon and the Klamath Basin — officials at Oregon’s only national park are preparing for the possibility of having to truck in water for summer use.

Water for places such as the lodge, Rim Village, visitor’s center, campground and employee housing at Crater Lake doesn’t come from the lake. In fact, park officials can’t legally draw water from the lake.

The sole source of water instead comes from Annie Creek, which is fed largely by snowpack and subject to drought-triggered water shutoffs in the Klamath Basin.

“We’re extremely dry right now, almost the driest in our history,” Burch said. “Even if they do grant another exemption — and we’re certain we’re going to need it — the water situation is so drastic that Annie Creek might get too low to draw water from at all.”

Officials at Crater Lake have taken steps to mitigate water use as much as possible. They’ve installed water conservation devices, such as low-flow showerheads and toilets in every building, and prohibit all use of water except for human consumption and sanitation.

Officials drilled an exploratory well that produces water, but still are in the process of getting a permit to actually use the water.

That means if worse comes to worst — if drought in the Klamath Basin cuts off water use in Annie Creek or the creek runs dry — trucking water into the park is a possibility this summer. The only other option would be closing the park, something nobody wants to see happen, considering Crater Lake is visited by almost a half-million people each year.

“It’s not the preferred option at all, and we’re in talks with the state to look for an alternative source of water,” Burch said. “We really see this as a crisis in the short-term, but we’re definitely looking at long-term solutions since this kind of shortage appears to be the new way of life out West.”

And what about that massive storehouse of the clearest, coldest water in the world just below their feet?

“The fact is, the park was created to protect Crater Lake, and we have no legal right to take water from it,” Burch said. “We do see the irony. It’s kind of, ‘water water everywhere and not a drop to drink.’ ”

Zach Urness has been an outdoors writer, photographer and videographer in Oregon for six years. He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. For more news, adventures and trips see Our Oregon Outdoors on Facebook or ZachsORoutdoors on Twitter.

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